The Eastern PA Animal Alliance fixes thousands of stray and feral cats every year, but if officials can’t hire a new veterinarian, they will be forced to close in June.
SCRANTON, Pa. – Eastern PA Animal Alliance is a low-cost, non-profit spay and neuter clinic in NEPA. EPAA has a location in Wilkes-Barre that is open Mondays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, EPAA goes mobile, traveling to Scranton and the Mount Pocono area. EPAA technicians showed Newswatch 16 inside the mobile clinic, where thousands of stray and feral cats are cared for every year.
“They reproduce exponentially, they reproduce when they are in heat and when they are not in heat. So they are induced ovulators, as they call it, so they reproduce no matter what,” said Katrina Coviello, Anesthesia and Recovery Technician at Eastern PA Animal Alliance.
Effective immediately, EPAA will close its doors on June 5 because its full-time veterinarian is “seeking a different outlet in veterinary medicine.” Now the team of technicians is looking for a new veterinarian so that the closure does not happen.
“If we end up closing our doors and there aren’t enough places for people to take their feral cats in the community to get fixed, spayed and neutered, it will be an absolute crisis,” said Sheri Sakosky with the Eastern PA Animal Alliance Anesthetic Technician.
In 2023, EPAA fixed 3,823 community cats, i.e. stray or feral, as part of the Trap, Neuter, Release program. Not to mention the spaying and neutering that EPAA does for pets and rescues. So if you say about 4,000 cats per year, times 3 litters per cat and 3 cats per litter, the EPAA prevents about 36,000 stray cats from being born each year. And this is a low number because strays can have more than 3 litters in their lifetime, and most litters have more than 3 cats per litter.
“That number is crazy. How many are you preventing, and you’re not just preventing litters, you’re preventing a lot of suffering,” Sakosky said.
Starvation, infections and injuries caused by predator attacks, EPAA employees see this suffering firsthand every day. They say the closure will also impact the more than 15 rescues in the area that use their low-cost services. They say they are open to anything to avoid closure – hiring a full-time vet, a part-time vet, or even vets at local clinics who come in once or twice a month.
“If we don’t go to the source, which is spaying and neutering everything, we’ll never do anything. We need to keep up with spaying and neutering and we need to publicize that we are looking to hire,” Coviello said.
The work is paid; It is not a voluntary position. If you are interested in applying, you can send an email to EPAA – epaaonline2009@gmail.com. You can also stay up to date with opening hours over the next month and beyond by checking their website and Facebook page.
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